Your Vehicle’s Black Box Event Data Recorder

Jeff Rasansky, managing partner of Rasansky Law Firm, is an aggressive Dallas personal injury lawyer with 25 years of legal experience.

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You’ve probably heard of the “black box” on airplanes. The proper term for this is an EDR, which stands for Event Data Recorder. These devices allow investigators to reconstruct accidents and to see what happened. These devices are installed on many vehicles these days but the data is not always used by investigators after a crash.

What they do.

The reason that the EDR data is oftentimes not used, according to an article in the Claims Journal, is because there hasn’t been a requirement that the data be available to third parties until recently. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has only required that there be a universal format for this data and that there be a device designed to download it since 2006. For people involved in wrecks, the data on these devices could be extremely useful in the event that they file a lawsuit or have a dispute with their insurance company.

The data.

The EDR records, according to the article, is principally designed to trigger the air bag. In the event of a wreck, the device would record the impact and send the signal to deploy the airbag. It is also wired to other parts of the vehicle. This data, like the data on an airplane’s EDR, could conceivably give information about what happened before a wreck. Consider the implications for a second. If someone hit a pedestrian and there was a dispute about whether they tried to slow down to avoid hitting them or not, the EDR data could be used to see if they hit their brakes before hitting the pedestrian. There are numerous other ways that these devices could make it easier to settle sticky court cases with cold, hard facts.

Negligence and data.

Negligence cases require a motor vehicle accident lawyer to establish how their client was injured due to the negligence of another driver. With data such as braking being recorded, they could potentially prove very easily that a driver was not paying attention when they rear ended their client, for example. These devices are found in most vehicles these days and there are devices that can download the data available. Whether or not you have one, however, a vehicle accident lawyer may be able to help you to get compensated by arguing your case successfully in court by using other sources of data, such as police reports and insurance company reports. Electronic data, however, would be a huge help in some cases.

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